


Mosaics Are Made of Broken Pieces

by shipthehats



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Internal Struggle, M/M, Symbolism, dinner party stress, family reltaionships, highschool awkwardness, it's also a band kid au bc i love it, its gay(tm), just some really fucked up kids, man vs self, maybe some childhood flashbacks????, nyeh heh heh david, pinescone, post cannon gravity falls, post cannon otgw, soulmate au-dreams, the class project with the flour sack baby, unresolved tension towards stepdad, wirt is a loving big brother, wirt is a mommas boy, wirt will talk to birds about his problems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 11:24:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7755880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipthehats/pseuds/shipthehats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Soulmates share dreams<br/>Wirt just isn't buying into the whole idea of "love eternal." If these "soulmate" stories are true, then how can both Greg and Wirt exist? He's losing faith and hopes he doesn't have a soulmate. With the haunting and terrible nightmares Wirt has about the Unknown, he'd hate to subjugate someone else to that torment. The stress of insomnia, home life, past trauma, and high school are all taking their toll. Luckily, there is someone who seems more than willing to listen. Being paired together for an assignment gives them ample opportunities to figure things out for themselves. Wirt begins to wonder if there may be a deeper reason as to why this boy is so understanding. After all, Wirt never needed to explain his dreams...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mosaics Are Made of Broken Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt given to Shipthehats! Anon asked: Soulmate AU where they have each others dreams (and nightmares) lots of angst potential.  
> Bruh. Mi amigo. This is good shit. Thank you so much for letting me take this one sentence and exploit the h*ck out of it.

My mother and step-father hosted dinner parties. The young couples of the neighborhood showed up with wine bottles and casseroles in shallow, glass dishes. This would guarantee them a casserole in return, baked in the same dish. A trap, honestly, implemented to continue the cycle of social expectation. Suburban middle America had an etiquette all its own. The doorbell never rang because our mother would be watching for cars through the sheer curtains. But the squeak and rattle of the screen door, followed by high, forced pleasantries was my cue to hide myself away upstairs. My younger brother followed at my heels. Anytime we had company, he'd bring a game from his room into mine and beg me to play.  
              "Wirt, you're so boring, you only ever want to do puzzles. What about Operation?" he complained.  
              "I like puzzles, Greg," I convinced him. "But I want you to pick it out, alright?"  
              Greg rose from the carpet in the way only a child can, seemingly all at once. He ran out the door and was only gone a second before returning with a square box.  
              "This is the one I like," he said as he shook the lid from the bottom. Pieces tinked together and bounced on the floor in a cacophony. He could make any activity loud.   
              It used to be my favorite, too. Pink sunset with Lisa Frank dolphins swimming beneath the waves. Whales, turtles, jellyfish, all with sparkling eyes and glittering, glow-in-the-dark outlines. The pieces were worn, too easy to fit together, and the color strained my eyes. It was a garage sale find that Greg bought for a quarter. As he scattered the 250 pieces over the carpet with his small, pudgy hands, I remembered how proud it made him to buy something with his own money for once. Immediately he began to sort the pieces into groups the way I showed him to do. I smiled at him and ruffled his hair.  
              "Thanks, bro."  
              He just hummed a tune in response.  
              I didn't find puzzles too interesting, but it was something quiet we could do while I listened to the conversation floating up the stairs.  
              "Oh, you would not be _liEVe_ the dream we had last night!" said a shrill voice that pierced the air. I imagined her to have bottle-blonde hair with many, many rings on her knobby and orange fingers. "Tell them, Clark—he is so much better at telling it—go on!"  
              Clark spoke with a deep sound. I couldn't hear his words, just how they reverberated in his chest. I gave him a wiry, handlebar mustache and a bald head. His voice could have been drowning out the clinking of the Navy medals dutifully pinned onto his blazer. Then the dining room below was in a sudden uproar of laughter, the shrill lady cackled over all other voices. Clark must have been a funny man. I liked him. Or I liked the him I imagined.  
              It's the same conversation every time, though. They brag about shared dreams like it's an affirmation of their love for each other. I don't think I believe in all that. But take a walk down the street and you see couples everywhere. People holding hands and laughing. I ask myself, _Who are they trying to fool?_ Themselves, probably. Soulmates who are in love and faithful for all eternity. How does that even happen?  
              The laughter ceased and the conversation pulled apart into smaller, indistinguishable chats. They were all talking about their own dreams, surely. When you're an adult, all settled down and married, you get to talk about your dreams. Not me--I'm just a kid--what do I know? Dreams are not a conversation topic at a high school lunch table. They're the things whispered about underneath bleachers and in the disabled stalls of vandalized bathrooms. Information like that is kept secret. With the potential to make or break a person, their relationships, their entire existence...no wonder we're so scared of it. The identity of your "soulmate" isn't something you want the rest of the world to find out before you do.  
              I could hear the stairs creak, even as Greg shouted out an "Aha!" after he jammed two pieces together. It was Mom by the sound of it. Slowly she turned the handle and poked her head around the door. She'd always been soft-spoken. Everything about her was like that. Her shoulder-length hair was a quiet cut, a quiet color. Straight and limp like it didn't have much to say. Mom didn't speak but I raised my head expectantly. Greg noticed and turned around to face the door behind him.  
              "Are you boys playing nice?" she said lightly. "We're having cake downstairs if you want to join us." Mom smiled in her usual way with her lips never parting, like she remembered something sad that used to make her happy. It's a quiet expression. When I first started high school I'd noticed she smiles like that whenever she looks at me. I figured I must be starting to look like Dad.  
              "Yeah! Cake!" Greg ran to the door and hugged Mom around her legs, nearly toppling her over in the process. She placed a hand on Greg's shoulder and laughed quietly.  
              "It's marble cake," Mom said to me. "I know how you like that kind, Wirt.  
              I got up and stepped over the half-finished puzzle. "Yeah, cake sounds good."  
             Downstairs, the dinner guests had moved into the freshly dusted living room to enjoy their dessert and coffee.  They sat on the edges of chairs and were all smiles. They all seemed ready to get up at a moment's notice to offer a seat or to help clean up, knowing full well the other would refuse. After that, the one who offered the help would not insist and then could sit more comfortably. Greg and I made our way through the seated crowd, awkwardly following our mother into the kitchen. I grabbed plates from the cabinet before noticing the slightly fancier ones on the table. With the sound of scraping ceramic, I put them back and instead removed three forks from the silverware drawer.  
              "Here, Greggy, I saved a corner just for you."  
              Greg took the plate from Mom with both hands and ran into the living room. From where I helped our mother cut the rest of the cake, I heard Greg introduce himself to the room.  
              "Hello, I'm Gregory! But you can just call me Greg." There was a beat of pause and then, "I'll just sit on the floor now." Once again, the air shook with polite laughter.  
              Mom chuckled next to me as she put a cake-filled plate in my hand. "Go take that out to David for me, will you?"  
              I couldn't help but smile at Greg's extroverted nature. "Sure, Mom." In my other hand, I picked up my own plate of cake and cautiously made my way to the living room. As I turned the corner, I tried to map out the best way to give my step-dad his dessert, turn around, and then find a place to sit among strangers. I couldn't just take it up to my bedroom, because then I would be a "brooding teenager." Writing poetry in the dark to the tune of mournful clarinet music does not help to remove myself from the stereotype. After assuring myself that everyone was too busy worrying about how awkward _they_ were to notice how awkward _I_ was, I put one foot in front of the other.  
              The dinner guests were talking about their own children, their want for children, their children grown up and gone. No doubt sparked by Greg's appearance. David sat where he usually did on the maroon love seat, the spot next to him vacated. He was turned toward one of our neighbors, engaged in what looked to be an enamoring conversation. He didn't seem to notice me. I cleared my throat a little to try and catch his attention.  
              "David," I said to him as I held out his plate. After a second of silence with my arm held in the suddenly still air, he turned to me.  
              "Thanks, sport." Taking the plate, he then turned back and resumed his conversation. But the other guests whispered their dislike.  
              _Did you catch that?  
_ _Never would I have called my father by his first name.  
_ _Children these days...  
_               But David wasn't a father to me. If anything, he was just some man who lived in our house. I know he tried--in his own David way--but it was all superficial. My disinterest in both sports and business, and his disinterest in getting to know me created an ever widening gap between us. It wasn't hard to see.  
              Inwardly I drew out an exasperated sigh and sat down next to Greg. He had scooted his way over to perch on the raised hearth of the fireplace. A better seat for him than for me. My knees folded into my chest as I lowered myself to the stone while Greg freely knocked his outstretched feet together. Nine years of this dinner party awkwardness and I still hadn't figured a way out of it.  
              Mom entered the living room with coffee in her favorite mug. It was stained with yellow lines where dark coffee had dripped over the edge and collected on desk after desk. There were chips in the handle from being dropped into cup holders and taking too many trips through the dishwasher. Mom's was the ugliest coffee mug by far. The mug was older than Greg; Mom had had the mug longer than she knew David. When I was seven, I had saved all the money I could and bought it for her birthday. It used to have hand painted purple flowers along the edges. They had since faded into non-existence. The rest of the party guests sipped their coffee from a matching glass set.  
              David might have brought all sorts of changes with him, but Mom is still the same old Mom.  
              "Joy," David called to her, using her English name. "C'mere, I saved a spot for you." He patted the space next to him and beamed at her without noticing the tension in the room. There was no doubt in my mind he loved her, but he never said "Farrah."  
              Farrah. Her name is Farrah.  
              She touched the thin chain at her neck as she sat down next to him on the loveseat. She didn’t wear jewelry often because she disliked the way it rattled as she moved.  
              "Lovely cake, Joy," the man with Clark's voice said. He had the mustache but none of the Navy medals.  
              "Oh, thank you," was her quiet reply.  
              "You know we slaved away over the oven all day to make it!" David interjected.  
              More polite laughter at the expense of the store-bought cake. With that the awkward air was cleared and I finally took a bite. I did love marble cake. I loved that mom knew I loved it.  
              "Wirt," Greg whispered to me under the din of conversation. All that was left on his plate were the vanilla parts. "Wirt, I want to go back upstairs now."  
              Speaking around the marbled mess in my mouth I said to him, "It's rude to just up and leave. Go ask your dad or something."  
              Staring strangers did not faze him. Not even when I was his age did I have that lack of self-consciousness. He waddled right up to David and hugged him around the leg.  
              "Papa, can me and Wirt go play upstairs some more?"  
              " _Upstairs_?" David mimicked with mock surprise. "Why would you go and do a thing like that when you can stay down here with your mom and me?" Scooping up Greg under the shoulders, David swung his child onto his lap. Greg shrieked with laughter as David tickled him.  
              Greg gasped, "Papa, stop! Ahaha, it tickles! No!" He kicked his little feet in the air, thrashing close to the plates and coffee cups on the low table in front of them. Whether or not David noticed this was indeterminable, but he ceased his tickling and swallowed Greg into his arms. Mom leaned over slightly from her end of the loveseat and held them both. A mix of 'Aw's and 'How sweet's sprinkled around the perfect family of three.  
              A mother, a father, and their child. A child who was only theirs.  
              I sat across the room, on the cold stone of the fireplace, considering how easy it would be for them to carry on like that.  
              I was a stray line that made their portrait messy. An artist's mistake not so easily undone. It was not the first time the thought had gripped me. But as I stared, I noticed how I still touched their world. I saw myself in the marble cake. In the ugliest coffee cup in the room. The Persian rug, even older than my mother. The bird house outside. There were traces of my existence everywhere, but did they also recognize that?  
              Whatever the answer, I was the expendable.  
              After their moment, they sighed and pulled apart, Greg seated snuggly between them with a goofy grin plastered across his face. He opened his mouth and inhaled to speak, most likely to ask to be pardoned from the party. It was Mom who descended upon him with her own brand of tickles that left Greg kicking again. His giggling stirred up a feeling like guilt within me. I felt that I was in the way of Greg's happiness, in the way of all of them. Hearing a bubbling laugh like that should make a person feel warm inside. Instead it left me chilled and disconnected in a way I couldn't exactly explain in that moment.  
              I had let myself get lost in my own head for too long. With the sound of a shattering crash, I was pulled back to the dinner party with a start.  
              "I'm sorry, Momma! I didn't mean to..." Greg pleaded.  
              "Oh it wasn't you," Mom sighed as she bent to pick up the bigger pieces of ceramic. "I wasn't watching..."  
              David made a move to get off the sofa. "Here, I'll get the broom—"  
              "You will do no such thing, David: you just sit with your boy. I'll manage the broom for Joy." It was the woman with the shrill voice. Her hair was blonde but not grotesquely so. She walked on high heels to the kitchen and returned quickly with our broom and a brown paper bag.  
              Mom turned to me. "Wirt, can you take your brother upstairs?"  
              Blinking a few times to clear the fog that had gathered at the front of my mind, I rose to pick Greg off the sofa.  
              "Here we go, buddy."  
              I lifted him over the shards and set him down on the carpet next to me. He was teary-eyed, but not enough for him to start crying. I felt a half smile curl my mouth and lift my brows.  
              "Hey, it's fine. It happens." I patted his back and followed him up the stairs. The scuttling sound of bodies resulted after our exit. Now no one could sit idly as ceramic pieces tinked together in a paper bag.  
              "Sorry about your mug, Joy."  
              "No worries, Dana. It wasn't much to look at anyway."  
              And that hurt more than any jagged china could.

**Author's Note:**

> Damn. Ouch, man.  
> Dipper makes his first appearance in the next chapter so don't touch that dial! I'm expecting 5 chapters for this fic so bookmark and tell me what things you like. I write just as much for myself as I do for you guys :3  
> If you have prompts you'd like me to write, send them to shipthehats.tumblr.com


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